UPTON,
May 15, 1904.
MY DEAR HERBERT,--You ask if I have read anything lately? Well, I have
been reading Stalky & Co. with pain, and, I hope, profit. It is an
amazing book; the cleverness, the freshness, the incredible originality
of it all; the careless ease with which scene after scene is touched
off and a picture brought before one at a glance, simply astounds me,
and leaves me gasping. But I don't want now to discourse about the
literary merits of the book, great as they are. I want to relieve my
mind of the thoughts that disquiet me. I think, to start with, it is
not a fair picture of school life at all. If it is really
reminiscent--and the life-likeness and verisimilitude of the book is
undeniable--the school must have been a very peculiar one. In the first
place, the interest is concentrated upon a group of very unusual boys.
The Firm of Stalky is, I humbly thank God, a combination of boys of a
rare species. The other figures of boys in the book form a mere
background, and the deeds of the central heroes are depicted like the
deeds of the warriors of the Iliad. They dart about, slashing and
hewing, while the rank and file run hither and thither like sheep,
their only use being in the numerical tale of heads that they can
afford to the flashing blades of the protagonists; and even so the
chief figures, realistic though they are, remind me not so much of
spirited pictures as of Gillray's caricatures. They are highly
coloured, fantastic, horribly human and yet, somehow, grotesque.
Everything is elongated, widened, magnified, exaggerated. The
difficulty is, to my mind, to imagine boys so lawless, so unbridled, so
fond at intervals of low delights, who are yet so obviously
wholesome-minded and manly. I can only humbly say that it is my belief,
confirmed by experience, that boys of so unconventional and daring a
type would not be content without dipping into darker pleasures. But
Kipling is a great magician, and, in reading the book, one can
thankfully believe that in this case it was not so; just as one can
also believe that, in this particular case, the boys were as mature and
shrewd, and of as complete and trenchant a wit as they appear. My own
experience here again is that no boys could keep so easily on so high a
level of originality and sagacity. The chief characteristic of all the
boys I have ever known is that they are so fitful, so unfinished. A
clever boy will say incredibly acute things, but among a dreary tract
of wonderfully silly ones. The most original boys will have long lapses
into conventionality, but the heroes of Kipling's book are never
conventional, never ordinary; and then there is an absence of
restfulness which is one of the greatest merits of Tom Brown.
But what has made the book to me into a kind of Lenten manual is the
presentation of the masters. Here I see, portrayed with remorseless
fidelity, the faults and foibles of my own class; and I am sorry to say
that I feel deliberately, on closing the book, that schoolmastering
must be a dingy trade. My better self cries out against this
conclusion, and tries feebly to say that it is one of the noblest of
professions; and then I think of King and Prout, and all my highest
aspirations die away at the thought that I may be even as these.
I suppose that Kipling would reply that he has done full justice to the
profession by giving us the figures of the Headmaster and the Chaplain.
The Headmaster is obviously a figure which his creator regards with
respect. He is fair-minded, human, generous; it is true that he is
enveloped with a strange awe and majesty; he moves in a mysterious way,
and acts in a most inconsequent and unexpected manner. But he generally
has the best of a situation; and though there is little that is
pastoral about him, yet he is obviously a wholesome-minded, manly sort
of person, who whips the right person at the right time, and generally
scores in the end. But he is a Roman father, at best. He has little
compassion and no tenderness; he is acute, brisk, and sensible; but he
has (at least to me) neither grace nor wisdom; or, if he has, he keeps
them under a polished metallic dish-cover, and only lifts it in
private. I do not feel that the Headmaster has any religion, except the
religion of all sensible men. In seeming to despise all sentiment,
Kipling seems to me to throw aside several beautiful flowers, tied
carelessly up in the same bundle. There should be a treasure in the
heart of a wise schoolmaster; not to be publicly displayed nor drearily
recounted; but at the right moment, and in the right way, he ought to
be able to show a boy that there are sacred and beautiful things which
rule or ought to rule the heart. If the Head has such a treasure he
keeps it at the bank and only visits it in the holidays.
The "Padre" is a very human figure--to me the most attractive in the
book; he has some wisdom and tenderness, and his little vanities are
very gently touched. But (I daresay I am a very pedantic person) I
don't really like his lounging about and smoking in the boys' studies.
I think that what he would have called tolerance is rather a deplorable
indolence, a desire to be above all things acceptable. He earns his
influence by giving his colleagues away, and he seems to me to think
more of the honour of the boys than of the honour of the place.
But King and Prout, the two principal masters--it is they who spoil the
taste of my food and mingle my drink with ashes. They are, in their
way, well-meaning and conscientious men. But is it not possible to love
discipline without being a pedant, and to be vigilant without being a
sneak? I fear in the back of my heart that Kipling thinks that the
trade of a schoolmaster is one which no generous or self-respecting man
can adopt. And yet it is a useful and necessary trade; and we should be
in a poor way if it came to be regarded as a detestable one. I wish
with all my heart that Kipling had used his genius to make our path
smoother instead of rougher. The path of the schoolmaster is indeed set
round with pitfalls. A man who is an egotist and a bully finds rich
pasturage among boys who are bound to listen to him, and over whom he
can tyrannise. But, on the other hand, a man who is both brave and
sensitive--and there are many such--can learn as well as teach
abundance of wholesome lessons, if he comes to his task with some hope
and love. King is, of course, a verbose bully; he delights in petty
triumphs; he rejoices in making himself felt; he is a cynic as well, a
greedy and low-minded man; he takes a disgusting pleasure in detective
work; he begins by believing the worst of boys; he is vain, shy,
irritable; he is cruel, and likes to see his victim writhe. I have
known many schoolmasters and I have never known a Mr. King, except
perhaps at a private school. But even King has done me good; he has
confirmed me in my belief that more can be done by courtesy and decent
amiability than can ever be done by discipline enforced by hard words.
He teaches me not to be pompous, and not to hunger and thirst after
finding things out. He makes me feel sure that the object of detection
is to help boys to be better, and not to have the satisfaction of
punishing them.
Prout is a feeble sentimentalist, with a deep belief in phrases. He is
a better fellow than King, and is only an intolerable goose. Both the
men make me wish to burst upon the scene, when they are grossly
mishandling some simple situation; but while I want to kick King, when
he is retreating with dignity, my only desire is to explain to Prout as
patiently as I can what an ass he is. He is a perfect instance of
absolutely ineffective virtue, a plain dish unseasoned with salt.
There are, of course, other characters in the book, each of them
grotesque and contemptible in his own way, each of them a notable
example of what not to be. But I would pardon this if the book were not
so unjust; if Kipling had included in his gathering of masters one
kindly, serious gentleman, whose sense of vocation did not make him a
prig. And if he were to reply that the Headmaster fulfils these
conditions, I would say that the Headmaster is a prig in this one
point, that he is so desperately afraid of priggishness. The manly man,
to my mind, is the man who does not trouble his head as to whether he
is manly or not, not the man who wears clothes too big for him, and
heavy boots, treads like an ox, and speaks gruffly; that is a pose, not
better or worse than other poses. And what I want in the book is a man
of simple and direct character, interested in his work, and not ashamed
of his interest; attached to the boys, and not ashamed of seeming to
care.
My only consolation is that I have talked to a good many boys who have
read the book; they have all been amused, interested, delighted. But
they say frankly that the boys are not like any boys they ever knew,
and, when I timidly inquire about the masters, they laugh rather
sheepishly, and say that they don't know about that.
I am sure that we schoolmasters have many faults; but we are really
trying to do better, and, as I said before, I only wish that a man of
Kipling's genius had held out to us a helping hand, instead of giving
us a push back into the ugly slough of usherdom, out of which many good
fellows, my friends and colleagues, have, however feebly, been
struggling to emerge.--Ever yours,